These website failings confirm some of the characteristics that I, coming from the UK originally, have noted about New Zealanders over the years.

Kiwis are a very enterprising lot. That Trade Me was making so much money naturally led people to see an opportunity.

The trouble is, there is this awful tendency to do things on the cheap, as showed by the Wheedle fiasco, which will prove to be far more expensive in the long run. There is also a "she'll be right" attitude, and it does make you wonder if both auction sites were somewhat rushed before proper testing was done.

But New Zealand does have a talented and successful IT sector stacked with much entrepreneurial talent.

In the past week or so, I have written about some successful e-commerce sites, such as United Sweets, a rapidly growing company that import sweets from the US and the UK, and plans international expansion, including into Australia. There's also sports equipment supplier Toropedo7, another Hamilton-based company that's already doing well in Australia.

Of course, we mustn't forget Trade Me; its success led to these and other flattering imitators.

It was always going to be difficult enough for these fledgling newcomers to tackle Trade Me, with the site being so entrenched and dominant. Though both of the newbies still have much goodwill out there from the community, this week's failures have cost them so much credibility that it will make their tasks much harder.

Darren Greenwood has been in journalism, not all of it IT, since the days of typewriters and long before the web spun its way around the world.Coming from Yorkshire, he can be blunt, and though having resided in New Zealand, as well as Australia, for quite some time, he insists he is not one of the 'sheeple!'